Monkey, Young Vic Theatre, London

A really great ape

The road to Hamleys not the path to Enlightenment preoccupies children at this time of year. But the Young Vic takes us all on a spiritual quest as well as on a rollickingly comic travel adventure in Monkey, a show adapted by Colin Teevan from Wu Ch'eng-en's classic 16th-century novel. You get to chant "Om Mane Padme Hum" to release Monkey from one of his tight spots – a nice change from clapping to revive Tinkerbell (though, in fact, there's also some traditional "it's behind you", involving a spectacular Fish Dragon). There's lots of leaping and somersaulting martial arts, too, performed to an Eastern rap-beat.

Elliot Levey's wonderfully engaging Monkey represents irrepressible ego. His wide-legged skip is a round-the-clock triumphal march, and he brandishes his stick with pride like someone who knows he'd win any willy-measuring contest going. Presented with the scroll of Death, he erases his name by cheekily wiping his bottom on it. He can't get enough of himself and eggs the kids on to encourage him to eat the forbidden fruit in the Emperor's garden. Clearly, he will have to be taught a Lesson. Buddha drops a mountain on him (which descends in the shape of an elegant black tent). Then, after 500 years, he is sent on a mission with Tripitaka, a monk (the gamine Inika Leigh Wright), and various sidekicks, to the Western Heaven in search of the Sacred Scriptures that will bring peace back to strife-torn China.

Mick Gordon's production is full of imaginative and memorable effects, bringing off the seemingly impossible (three guards being eaten by demons?) in witty ways. Likewise, Teevan's script skilfully blends serious story-telling and agreeable groan- making gags. But, beautiful though it often is, the show has not established as yet a really satisfying narrative rhythm, nor does it achieve take-off. The music is recorded and this brings home how much Tim Supple's superb Christmas shows at this address depended on the live and very visible creation of their sound worlds.

The piece moves towards the paradoxical wisdom that true fullness is emptiness and that you only become yourself by forgetting yourself. But with its calligraphy-covered set, the production never gives us a true metaphor for this insight: a naked stage free from the dramas caused by false desire. And there's one important lacuna. Monkey fails to broach, let alone answer, that deep spiritual conundrum: where does the monkey keep its nuts?

To 19 Jan, on tour from Feb (020-7928 6363)